[Corpora-List] FW: Gender differences in language

[Emiliano Guevara]

logorrheic impulses
sesquipedalian verbiage

... call it what you want, I really don't care. Just try to be polite.

E.





On 30 Mar 2008, at 04:03, James L. Fidelholtz wrote:
> Emiliano Guevara wrote that we should "...try to find a balance  
> between ... logorrheic impulses and
> the aims of a public information space: some people make  
> interesting questions, others give pertinent answers...."
>
> Without denying that some of us (who, through modesty, will remain  
> nameless) *do* have logorrheic impulses (a seventh-grade companion  
> once stymied me by accusing me of "sesquipedalian verbiage" --  
> sorry, Emiliano), it is quite clear that there is a full and fine  
> gradient between what many see as 'interesting questions ... and  
> pertinent answers', on the one hand, and 'logorrheic  
> impulses' (hereinafter 'LI') on the other. Personally, I find two  
> good things about this list:
>
> 1) it has more good discussions than any other list I can think of  
> (I would miss only LinguistNetwork more if I didn't have email, and  
> that only because of the full listing of meetings and books that it  
> has); and
>
> 2) it is by far the most helpful list I know of when people  
> (novices or advanced corpus analysts alike) have questions about  
> corpus mechanics, etc. This, I believe, is because: a) most of the  
> best practitioners in Corpus Linguistics are on this list; and
>                                                                b)  
> for whatever reason, Corpus Linguists [or corpus practitioners from  
> other fields] seem to be more helpful than run-of-the-mill list  
> members of other lists. This may be because most of us (if I can  
> presumptuously include myself here) learned how to manipulate  
> corpora pretty much the hard way: by trial and error, so we tend to  
> be easy-going with novices and with others who may have taken a  
> different road to corpora than we did.
>
> For these reasons, I'm proud to be a member of this list, and  
> generally read all contributions that are not obviously way out of  
> the areas that I am interested in. And I'm rarely sorry I did.
>
>
> To get back to the LI issue: we do need to recognize that Emiliano  
> has decent reasons for saying what he does. Still, many interesting  
> comments occur during 'logorrheic' divagations. And if we can  
> accept that most of us are intelligent (and I think we can), then  
> wading through a little logorrhea is a small price to pay for the  
> occasional nuggets one finds therein. Likewise, as I already  
> intimated above, I personally find very little that I would really  
> classify as logorrhea. When I do run across some, it becomes easy  
> to lump such contributions with those out of my area of interest  
> and just skip them.
>
> Jim
>
>
> On 3/29/08, Dr DJ Hatch <drdjhatch at gmail.com> wrote: When I was an  
> undergrad we were taught, if I remember correctly, that what
> is innate is (a) universal grammar.
> ...
> Oh, I forgot to reply to the query on 'prescriptive grammar'. It's  
> merely
> the grammar taught by language teachers and compiled by the  
> grammarians who
> serve that industry. Such persons have led me to the belief that ALL
> languages are over-grammaticalised  by those who give us prescriptive
> grammars, and then by ourselves through our acceptance and use of  
> the stuff.
> ...
> A very sensible grammarian once suggested in my hearing that a  
> language
> needs either strict word order (plus prepositions, etc) or strict word
> ending rules (so without prepositions). This seems a rather persuasive
> hypothesis. But are there any languages out there which conform to it?
> If not, was that grammarian wrong, or do we actually have too much  
> grammar?
>
> ... it seems to me that the pivotal issue remains
> which parts of language are grammatical and which not? Ie, how much of
> 'meaning'  if any  is covered/explained by grammar. This sounds a very
> amateurish question. But it seems to be a not unimportant one. Over  
> the
> years a number of my colleagues have suggested that one problem  
> here is the
> poverty of sub-disciplines such as (traditional) semantics, which  
> seemed to
> be very influential in Cricean 'pragmatics'.
>
> I really think it is unclear to many (in and around linguistics) as  
> to where
> grammar ends and where some other stuff begins (that is, the stuff  
> and the
> sub-discipline responsible for 'keeping it in order').
> ...
>
>
>
> -- 
> James L. Fidelholtz
> Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
> Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y
>      Humanidades
> Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de
>      Puebla, MÉXICO

****************************************
Emiliano R. Guevara
Facoltà di Lingue e Lett. Straniere
Dip. di Lingue e Lett. Straniere
Università di Bologna
Via Cartoleria 5 (40124) Bologna, Italia

Homepage: http://morbo.lingue.unibo.it/

E-mail:   emiliano.guevara at unibo.it
           emiguevara at gmail.com
****************************************


_______________________________________________
Corpora mailing list
Corpora at uib.no
http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora